Email survey asking questions about the Bar Examiners is not a YLD project

By Mark D. KillianManaging Editor

Florida lawyers who receive an unsolicited email with the subject line “Short Survey of the Florida Bar Admissions Process” should be aware that it is NOT an official survey being conducted by The Florida Bar’s Young Lawyers Division.

A number of members have contacted the Bar after receiving the emailed survey who wanted to know if it was a project of the Young Lawyers Division because it arrives from an address that reads “yld.study@gmail.com.”

Young Lawyers Division President Paige Greenlee said the YLD has “absolutely no involvement” in the email survey.

“We did not authorize this email and we are working with The Florida Bar to determine who sent it,” Greenlee said. “Because of the email address that was utilized in sending it — yld.study@gmail.com — there has been a great deal of confusion and many of our members have thought it was something that was authored by the Young Lawyers Division. At this point, we do not know what individual or entity sent it or the intended use of the results. Therefore, I strongly discourage all of our members from responding to it.”

The body of the request to participate in the survey contains this language: “This study is born of observation. We are attorneys who began noticing anecdotal evidence that interacting with the FBBE can be more frustrating than perhaps one should reasonably expect. What started in March 2013 as a side-project has developed into an enlightening enquiry into the practices and procedures of the FBBE. To date, we have distributed over 8,000 questionnaires to Florida-licensed attorneys; the response from the community is exceeding expectations, and is beginning to shed some light on a process that has remained cloaked in secrecy for far too long.”The survey asked respondents, among other things, to discuss both their pre-exam and post-exam experience with the Board of Bar Examiners, particularly concerning the character and fitness investigation and “anything else (and we do mean anything) regarding your experience with the Florida Board of Bar Examiners that left you frustrated, confused, annoyed, or irritated for any reason at all.”

The News emailed the authors of the survey to learn more about it, but had not received a reply as this News went to press.